Women shot her daughters and then herself

A De Doorns woman has shot dead her two teenage daughters in their beds
before lying down between them and turning the gun on herself.

The drama unfolded in the Winelands town on Wednesday, when station
commander Lieutenant-Colonel Desmond van der Westhuizen rushed to the
family's home after he was tipped off by a staffer about potential
trouble at the house.

He raced to the house in Voortrekker Road, where he found the house
locked. He smashed a window, clambered inside. He found the victims in
the children's bedroom.

Two girls, aged 13 and 14, lay under duvets on their beds, which had
been pushed together. Both girls had sustained gunshot wounds to the
chest and head.

Between them lay their 42-year-old mother, clutching a pistol. She had
suffered what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

"It was very horrible."

A 38 Special revolver was nearby; six rounds had been fired from the
revolver, and a further two from the pistol.

Van der Westhuizen took the woman, who was still alive, to a hospital in
Worcester.

She died at 1am on Thursday.

Van der Westhuizen later established that the guns had belonged to the
woman's parents, who were visiting from the Free State. They had been
due to leave to spend the Easter weekend in Mossel Bay together on
Thursday - but the couple had left the house on Wednesday morning to
spend the day in Worcester, leaving their guns at their daughter's
house.

Searching the girls' bedroom, the officer also found typed letters in
their cupboards' drawers, from the mother to her daughters, "telling
them how much she loved them".

He found a third letter, in which the woman instructed her family how
she wanted her children to be buried.

The police on Wednesday opened two murder cases for the girls' deaths
and an inquest docket for the apparent suicide.

The names of the woman and the two girls have not yet been released.

The woman appeared to be a divorcee who had resided with her two
daughters, he said.
This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape
Argus on April 01, 2010